Recipe: Baked Meatballs

These meatballs are one of my friend’s & family’s favorite appetizers/small plates. We often have people over and just eat a variety of little dishes instead of a regular meal. These meatballs are almost always served on these occasions.

Prep 10 minutes

Cook 25 minutes

Serves 4, generously

500g ground beef

500g ground pork

1 egg

cumin

paprika

chili powder

onion powder

garlic powder

dried basil

dried oregano

dried rosemary

dried thyme

kosher salt

Preheat oven to 400°F.

For the spices I actually use a pre-made TexMex and Italian seasoning blend from a great store called Silk Road in Edmonton. If you want you can of course use any pre-made blend but if you want to make it yourself the TexMex contains cumin, paprika, chili powder, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper. The Italian blend has dried basil, dried oregano, dried rosemary, dried thyme, garlic powder, onion powder and salt. I’m sure if you do a bit of digging online you can find some great recipes for spice blends, but if you have a nice local store that specializes in spices (like I do with Silk Road) then I really recommend you use them. Their blends are great and make life a lot easier.

For the meatballs I use 1/4 cup of TexMex and about 1/6 of a cup of Italian spice blend.

Combine the ground beef, ground pork, egg and spices blends and incorporate well. I recommend mixing with your hands and really scrunching everything together. Use immediately or cover and refrigerate for up to 24 hours.

Shape the meatballs into golf ball sized balls using your hands and place them close together (ie. touching) in a high sided baking dish. The sides only have to be higher than the meatballs. Bake for 20 minutes or until cooked all the way through. At this point I like to broil the tops of the meatballs for around 5 minutes to get the tops really nice and crispy.

I recommend serving these with a savory jam. I know this might sound weird but the combination of sweetness with the richness of the meatballs really works well together.

Prep 3 minutes

Cook None

Serves 8-16 depending on Jam

1 jar of jam

1 tablespoons Worcestershire

1 tablespoon TexMex blend

1/2 tablespoon Italian blend

To create a more savory jam that will compliment the flavors in the meatballs simply combine the above ingredients. You can either serve the jam on top of the meatballs or on the side so you guests can spoon the jam over themselves/make a little pool for dunking.

Just a heads up, the jam jar I’m talking about is one of the smaller ones (~1 cup). If you use a bigger jam jar just increase the spice amounts accordingly.

As always thank you for reading and if you try out this recipe let me know how it goes in the comments below. Please also let me know any recipes, cuisines or techniques you want to know more about and I’ll try my best to either share something I’ve already done or find something new.